Local celebrities in the Maldives - Week 1

COUNTRY: Maldives
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Teaching & Sports Coaching
WRITTEN BY: Lauren Hansen

I can’t believe it has only been a week since we left home! The locals here in the Maldives are extremely friendly and have been going out of their way to welcome us and to help us settle in. This has extended from the first 1am pick up at the airport by our in country partners through to Suna’s husband Misbar and the excursion team organizing numerous snorkeling trips and delivering us foreigners continual supplies of bottled water and toilet paper as us antipodeans adapt to their heat and culture.

As we arrived on the bumpy little planes into Gan from Male airport, we were instantly blanketed in hot, humidity. Addu Atoll itself is bigger than we had pictured and I also hadn’t thought too much about the appearance of the locals and how much we would stand out as foreigners. This soon became apparent as we felt somewhat like local celebrities with all the looks and waves of ‘hello’ we get biking down the main street with all our different hair colours and pale faces.

Suna, our in country partner and her husband are hilarious and very welcoming. They helped reschedule Ben’s flights and eventually got him down to our island and organized an orientation and bus tour of the island to help us settle in. We have also met the Mayor and been shown the best café on the island to get Iced Milo and Wahoo fish (and chips), although as far as food, the meals at the guesthouse have been a tasty range of the local foods, with plenty of fish, chili and even some chicken.

From midweek we began our placements with the 13 of us being divided into 3 groups each working at either the schools or hospital. The school was a bit of a shock for us teachers at Hithadoo School which included Hannah, Ashleigh, Jamie and I (Lauren). We learnt at their staff meeting on day one that they are largely underfunded, understaffed and unprepared for the coming term with school starting next Monday with no tables, no principle and very few resources. Despite all the misfortune, in a seemingly traditional Maldivian way they look at this as a challenge and are all smiles trying their best to slowly get school ready for the kids arrival while we try to figure out how we can best help out.

Sharafuddin School which is ranked number one in the country seems much more prepared and structured, ready for the term ahead. The volunteers at this school, Gabby, Caity, Nat and Ben have been given a teacher each who they will be helping out in the classroom, particularly with the English lessons, although they will be back at school in the afternoons for sports coaching with a day of basketball, netball and three days of swim coaching for the students.

At the hospital the girls have been surprised by the differences between the hospitals at home and here, particularly in respect to hygiene and sterilization, which is often seemingly non-existent. Bree spent the week in maternity, Kara and Sam in ER and Amber spent the week in surgery. Shocked when she had to prepare for surgery by folding her own gauze which is reused and hand folded by the nurses on their laps, rather than the usually sterile purchased products from home, even the one that fell to the floor was picked up, dusted and put back in the surgery pack. Since the completion of circumcision season all the surgeons have returned to India and most of the surgeries have been sent there as well, leaving Amber with very little excitement in her department and being instructed by the other nurses to spend her day sleeping on the floor in the surgery rooms. The girls went on a boat excursion to a small hospital at the other side of the atoll, across the harbour. There they talked to a group of older locals about geriatric health with the help of Suna who translated, and did a presentation to the local nurses before having a traditional Maldivian lunch.

In our free time we have been out snorkeling with the excursion team and seen turtles, rays, seahorses, colorful coral and millions of fish. We have also been getting fit biking around the island and the volunteers at the Sharafuddin School were taken on a motorbike tour down to Gan last night with their teachers. With school not starting until next week we had no official swim lessons so have been teaching the local teachers children and some of the teachers themselves how to swim in the early mornings before going to placement. At school this week Jamie also recruited us to help get some of the classrooms ready and we spray painted furniture and decorated the bare classroom walls in the shared year 1 and 3 classroom.

Being Friday today, it is the start of the Maldivian weekend and we are looking forward to a boat ride to an uninhabited island to go snorkeling this afternoon. Tomorrow we are going to try out the rowing and Sunday is a local holiday so rather than placements we are heading down to the beach to do a clean-up, as the locals have no rubbish removal system or recycling. Due to this, all rubbish, which isn’t burnt outside people’s houses or driven down to the tip, ends up polluting the local beaches. Next week should be exciting with the children starting school, more sports and swimming lessons beginning and the girls in the hospital rotating to a new ward. We look forward to the challenges ahead and as the Hithadoo school emphasis “2013 is our year”. ☺